How much do you get others to do the work?

This is probably one of the least publicized weapons of mass destruction in business model design. What could be more powerful than getting others to do the work while you earn the money?

In the bricks and mortar world IKEA gets us to assemble the furniture we buy from them. We do the work. They save money. On the web Facebook gets us to post photos, create and participate in conversations, and “like” stuff. That’s the real value of Facebook, entirely created by users, while they simply provide the platform. We do the work. They earn the sky-high valuations of their shares.

Previously mentioned Redhat crafted another smart business model based on other people’s work. Their entire business model is built on top of software developed by the open source software development community. This allowed them to substantially reduce their development costs and compete head-on with larger companies like Microsoft.

A more malicious business model in which others do the work is the one practiced by so-called patent trolls. In this model patents are purchased with the sole intention of suing successful companies to extract payments from them.